Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Who's Who in Berk: Faction Leaders (Librarians and Russian Werewolves)

If you were to ask the average passerby on the street in downtown Berk who runs the town, most people would point to the Library and tell you that the Chief Librarian is in charge. Any nearby Russian Werewolves would hotly contest this, as Berk is a conquered territory run by the General of the First Vladivostok Werewolf Aiborne. If a passing Brofessor were to hear the exchange, he or she would quickly point out that the the Professor of the University is in charge. To make everyone happy, these posts will try to describe the various faction leaders.

Millicent Renfield, Chief Librarian

The headquarters of the Librarian faction is at the Great Library in downtown Berk, and the chief librarian is Millicent Renfield. She is known throughout the Berk area as a shrewdly cunning woman with a great sense of responsibility and hidden depths of compassion. For all that, people who meet her have a crawling sense that they are forgetting about something they owe her, and she knows it.

Renfield is a woman in her fifties with steel-grey hair in a bun. She has perfect vision, but she has a way of peering up at people that gives the impression of someone looking over the top of glasses (at which point the feeling of owing her something increases dramatically and a desire to pay a fine manifests). She wears fine jackets, long skirts, and boots.

The Librarians made Renfield the Chief Librarian about five years ago, with the retirement of the previous Chief. She was the head of the Archival unit at the time, with special knowledge in the cataloging of combat trophies. Rumor has it that, before she became an Archivist, she was a Researcher who contributed many of those combat trophies. These rumors are bolstered by the fact that she can tell if a Kenner is set to a non-optimal charge just from being in the same room and detecting the shift in electricity levels on the fine hairs on her neck.

Ivan Ivanovich, General of the First Vladivostok Werewolf Airborne

Werewolf cadets are told that Ivan Ivanovich became General of the First Vladivostok by obstinately surviving all the other candidates until he got the job. He looks the part: a battered gray wolf with his fur all torn and matted, missing teeth, chewed ears, and a scarred muzzle. He has an air of utter fearlessness and determination, and his voice can make anyone jump just from hearing it. His posture is so straight that you could use him to straighten your pictures on your wall by comparing the way they hang to his spine.

The General wears his uniform at all times. While some non-Werewolves laugh about the huge number of medals and ribbons on his chest, Werewolves know that he earned every one of them, and in fact he only wears his most impressive ones because he ran out of room for the others. His uniform is kept in perfect shape, and he expects the same of every other Russian Werewolf. His skills with needle and thread are legendary. He has been known to stop an inspection parade, single out a Werewolf with a poorly repaired uniform, and fix the uniform with a few deft stabs of his needle (while the Werewolf tries not to breathe for fear of being stabbed by the intense general).

One thing that has caused countless First Vladivostok troops trouble when first meeting him is that his right eyelid was wounded in a fight with a twenty-foot eel in the submerged portion of West Berk, and as a result that eye does not open fully. This can cause people to assume that he is giving them a casual wink, which can cause the nervous Werewolf to relax and adopt a more informal tone with the General. The General encourages people who know this about his eye to keep mum about it around those who do not. After all, the Downtown Berk barracks toilets could always use a good scrub.